The man’s hands twitched like wings then settled on the sash at his waist. ‘Why?’

Kiska stopped herself from clasping her hands together, took a deep breath. ‘I want to be hired. I want a chance. Please. I have talent, really, I do. You’ll see. All I need is a chance.’

The Claw’s hands slid from his sash, clasped themselves at his back. He gave a one-sided smile that didn’t make him look at all amused. ‘So. You have talent, have you?’

Kiska’s heart lurched. She faltered, but stammered on, ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

The Claw shrugged. ‘This is a matter for the local commander. A Sub-Fist Pell, I believe. Take it up with him.’

’Yes, I have, but he-’

The man stepped noiselessly off the wall and disappeared. Kiska lunged to the edge. Nothing. A good three man-height’s fall to a cobbled road, empty. Kiska’s blood surged. She hugged herself, thrilled at the encounter. Amazing. The blunt mottled walls of Mock’s Hold beckoned above and she raised her fist.

She’d take it up all right. As high as she could! How could they possibly refuse her?

Crossing the inner bailey of Mock’s Hold, Temper shook out his cloak and pulled it over his shoulders. The courtyard was empty. All non-essential personnel had been cleared from the Hold. The guard complement either stood their posts or slept in the barracks. Everyone had been pulling double shifts since the nameless Imperial ‘High Official’ had arrived. She and her entourage had taken over the top three storeys of the inner keep, evicting the garrison commander, Pell, who now slept in the armoury drinking even more than his usual.

Why the visit? Temper had heard twenty opinions. Talk at the Hanged Man ran to the view that command at Unta was thinking about finally closing down the garrison and abandoning the island to the fishermen, the cliff rookeries, and the seal colony south at Benaress Rocks. In the meantime no extra shifts had been assigned his way. Seniority of age did carry some privileges. He smiled, anticipating an evening sampling Coop’s Old Malazan Dark.

At the fortified gatehouse, Lubben, the gatekeeper, limped out of the darkness within. His huge iron ring of keys rattled at his side. The hunch of his back appeared worse than usual, and his one good eye gleamed as he scanned the yard. Temper was about to ask what calamity had shaken him from his usual post snoring by the guardhouse brazier, when a flick of his hand warned him away.

‘Gate’s closed for the night, soldier.’

’Soldier? What’s the matter, Lubben? Gone blind from drink?’

Lubben jerked a thumb to the dark corridor at his rear, mouthed something Temper couldn’t hear.

‘What in the Enchantress’s unsleeping eyes is going-’ Temper broke off as someone else stepped soundlessly from the shadows. An Imperial Claw in an ankle-length black cloak, hood up. Lubben grimaced, offered Temper a small helpless shrug of apology. The Claw’s hood revealed only the lower half of a lined and lean face tattooed with cabalistic characters. Symbols that looked to Temper like the angular script of those who delve the Warren of Rashan, the Path of Darkness. The Claw turned to Lubben.

‘Trouble, gatekeeper?’

Lubben bowed deeply. ‘No, sir. No trouble at all.’

The hood swung to Temper, who immediately jerked his head down. Perhaps he was being too careful, but the Claw might interpret the act as deference. He’d seen in the past how deference pleased them.

‘What do you want, soldier?’

Temper squeezed his belt in both hands until his fingers numbed. Staring at the courtyard flagstones – two broken, four chipped – he began, cautiously. ‘Well, sir, I’m pretty much retired from service y’know, and I’ve a room of my own in town. I was only called up on account of the visit. Extra guards, y’see.’

‘Gatekeeper. Do you vouch for this man?’

Lubben flashed Temper a wink. ‘Oh, aye, sir. ‘Tis as the man says.’

‘I see.’

The Claw stepped close. Temper raised his head, but kept his gaze averted. Sidelong, he watched the Claw examine him. The last time he’d stood this close to one of these assassins had been a year ago and that time they’d been trying to kill him. He’d been prepared then, ready for the fight. All he felt now was shocked amazement at actually having run into one of the official’s escorts. Were they out patrolling as Chase suggested? Why this night?

‘You’re a veteran. Where are your campaign badges?’

‘I don’t wear them, sir.’

‘Ashamed?’

‘No, sir. Just consider myself retired.’

‘In a hurry to leave Imperial service?’

‘No, sir. I’ve just worked hard for my pension.’ Temper took a breath, then hurried on: ‘I’m building a boat you see. She’s the prettiest thing you’d ever-’

A hand rose from within the cloak to wave silence. ‘Very well. Gatekeeper, allow the man to pass.’

‘Aye, sir.’

At the far end of the entrance tunnel, Lubben lifted his ring of keys and unlocked the small thieves’ door in the main gate. Temper stepped through. Lubben poked his head out after him and grinned lop-sided, ‘You never told me you were building yourself a pretty little boat.’

‘Kiss Hood, you sawed-off hunchback.’

Laughing silently, Lubben answered with a gesture that needed no words then slammed the door. The lock rattled shut.

Temper started down Rampart Way’s steep slope. A staircase cut from the very stone of the cliff, it switched back four times as it descended the promontory’s side. Every foot of it lay within range of the Hold’s townward springalds and catapults. Above, a cloud front rolled in over the island, massing up from the Sea of Storms. The night looked to be shaping into one to avoid. Island superstition had it that the Stormriders themselves were responsible for the worst of the icy seasonal maelstroms that came raging out of the south.

The cliff rose as a knife-edge demarking the port city of Malaz’s northern border. Hugging its base was the Lightings, the rich estate district, taking what security it could from the shadow of the Hold above. South and west the city curved in a jumble of crooked lanes around the river and the marshy shore of Malaz Bay. Inland, modest hills rolled into the distance. Wood smoke drifted low over slate and flint roofs. A few lanterns glowed here and there. A weak drizzle drifted in behind the cloud front, obscuring Temper’s view of the harbour. Droplets brushed his neck like cold spit.

Of late the harbour served mainly as a military transit point, yet still retained some trade, a portion of which was even legitimate. All in all it was a lean shadow of what it had been. Deserted houses faced sagging warehouses and tottering, wave-eroded piers. Once home port to a piratical navy, then a thalassocracy, then an empire, the city now seemed crowded more by ghosts than people. It had given the empire its name, but had lost all tactical and strategic value, save as a staging point as the empire’s borders swept on to distant seas.

For a time, the Korelan invasion changed that, of course, and the residents had reawakened to renewed promise for the isle. But the campaign had since proven a disaster, an abyss of men and resources best left alone. The city, the island, now carried the haunted feel of a derelict. And thinking of that, Temper realized why this pimple on the backside of the empire should now receive the first message cutter he’d seen here: it was a missive for the official. The machinery of Imperial governance had returned, if ever so briefly, to where it had begun.

At the last switch back, Temper squinted up into the thin rain. Through a gap in the low clouds, Mock’s Hold appeared as if it was riding a choppy sea, overbalanced, about to capsize.

Temper rubbed a palm over his close-cropped hair to wipe away the rain and continued on. He wondered if this were a night for spirits even stronger than Coop’s Old Malazan Dark. Stretched out on cold ship planks, the memory of those grand dreams so alive just days ago made Kiska once again feel the heat of shame at her cheeks and throat. How childish she’d been! What a fool! Most of all she recalled her idiotic shock, her befuddled, dumb surprise when at the entrance to the Hold another bodyguard – a Claw, no doubt – took her aside by her arm – by her arm! – like a child.